Witness Update - The Responsibilities of a Steem Witness

I want to start out by wishing everyone a very happy new year! 2018 has gotten off to a really great start in the world of STEEM, and I suspect it is just the beginning of many more great things to come.

To start off this update, I want to highlight a post made by @transisto recently: My version of Steem is NOT content based, It is Contribution based. In the post he said:

If you're a posting content to Steem, take some time once in a while to reflect and show us how your contribution is helping Steem grow.

This really hit home for me and I consider “helping Steem grow” to be one of the most important responsibilities of the witnesses on the platform. I think that my past contributions (which you can see any time by checking my blog) have mostly had this focus, and it seems that has been reflected in my rewards and witness ranking, but going forward I plan to have an even more conscious focus on fulfilling what I believe to be the responsibilities of a Steem witness.

The primary responsibility for a witness is of course to produce blocks, but being a great witness means much more than that. I consider the witnesses to be the leaders of the Steem community and, as leaders, the witnesses have a responsibility to each and every member of the community to make the Steem platform the best in the world! I believe that responsibility includes (but is not limited to):

  1. Understanding how the platform works in great detail, and why;
  2. Promoting the platform to new users and investors to help it grow;
  3. Providing assistance and education to help everyone be more successful;
  4. Providing tools and services that improve the platform; and
  5. Preventing / curbing abuse, destructive behavior, and scams;

For #1 - I’ve only been here for about 5 months but I believe I have a better understanding of how the platform works than many who have been here far longer than that. That being said, I do know there are still many things I have left to learn and I literally keep a list of things that I don’t know or don’t understand about Steem and go through it periodically and spend the time to learn them.

For #2 - I’ve focused my efforts on this front to approaching individual investors with whom I already have a relationship and who can potentially bring larger amounts of investment or influence to the platform. To date the people I’ve introduced to the platform have invested nearly $100,000 into STEEM and I hope to bring that number into the millions in the near future.

For #3 - I don’t do this as much as some other witnesses, and I think the ones who focus on this definitely deserve a vote (like @timcliff and @drakos, for example), but whenever I learn things about the platform that I think others can benefit from I write a post about it, and I am often available on steemit.chat and discord to help out and answer questions.

For #4 - This has been my primary focus since I have a background in software development. In addition to the tools and services I have already created I have a number of other neat things that I plan to build to help improve the platform in the future, so stay tuned for those!

For #5 - This has been a very hot topic lately, and it’s a very difficult problem to deal with. I have and continue to work to prevent abuse of post promotion services specifically, but that’s only a small portion of what needs to be addressed. Again, witnesses that focus on this really deserve a vote, such as @patrice.

Of course, this is just the list that I came up with. I’d be very interested to hear what the community feels are the additional responsibilities of the witnesses. Please let me know in the comments and also let me know how you think myself and the other witnesses are doing towards fulfilling those responsibilities and the goal of growing the Steem platform!

If you think I’m doing a good job, you can support me by giving me your witness vote. You can either go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click the upvote icon next to my name, or click here to vote directly using SteemConnect!

Thanks for reading and for your support!

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I think in the end my idea of what the witnesses' main role boils down to one thing:

  • The stability of STEEM itself.

There's a bit of jockeying for popularity which thankfully isn't actually a big impact because after all, the witness results are going to be impacted by those with the most stake, not who is the most popular. That's actually a good thing in my mind. Not enough people are educated enough about how the system works and those that have invested so much better damn well have done their homework.

Of the list you have, 1 is absolutely the most important.

Anyone can make blocks. But witnesses set monetary policy, and they better know about the debt ratio and how SBD printing works and all that jazz.
Make blocks. Set monetary policy.

The others are kind of blurry. Is that actually the job of the witness? Or is that the job of the stakeholders to control that with their voting behavior and actions?

I think of witnesses as the economic advisory body, which should be voted on the basis of their knowledge of the system and the steem ecosystem.

The others are great but I wouldn't say it's a requirement for a witness. Driving value is on the rest of us.

That said, #2 and #5 are also very important for the stability of STEEM and would be what I think the witnesses should prioritize after #1.

Us non witnesses could probably handle the rest. (But I won't object to witnesses picking up some of that also).

My two cents.

This is one of the best replies I think I've ever received on one of my posts! So good, in fact, that I thought it deserved much more than my upvote (since most of my SP is delegated) so I went ahead and bought a bigger vote for it since this is a shining example of when post promotion services should be used.

You're absolutely spot on with everything you've said. Now that I re-read my post I was really mixing being a witness with being a leader of the platform. It's not required for a witness to be a Steem leader and vice versa, even though they very often do overlap.

As you said though, for witnesses being a leader is great, but setting the monetary policy and ensuring the platform runs smoothly is the absolute top priority. A great example of this is the bandwidth issues that new users are currently experiencing right now and I know the top witnesses are discussing potential solutions to that problem.

Thank you kindly! Good to know the bandwidth issue is being discussed, things are heating up here in Steem land :)

Hello yabapmatt, I sent @booster 1 SBD today but no upvote still been given on my post.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mawattoo8/today-on-duty-3f9d8808c49c9

What should I do to get my hardly earned money refunded.

You got a 7.23% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @yabapmatt! Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!

I have sent 5SBD to @postpromoter but not upvoted.

Can you please check the status or refund ?

You have received a refund, sorry for the issue.

Thank you very much. I hope issue is solved.

I have sent 2SBD to @postpromoter but not upvoted.
Can you please check the status or refund ?

You have received a refund, sorry for the issue.

Same problem here. Please check.

You have received a refund, sorry for the issue.

“I think of witnesses as the economic advisory body, which should be voted on the basis of their knowledge of the system and the steem ecosystem.”

After thinking about it a little further, I couldn’t agree with you more. Keeping incentives properly aligned will be one of the critical aspects to creating a true network effect, thus really growing the Steem blockchain, and the ecosystem being built on it. Thoughtful response and good job @yabapmatt for recognizing it and spreading some love where its due.

You sir, got my vote. I love the work you doing with the bots.

Hey man, may I translate your articles to Hebrew (for my community)?
Of course with a credit to you @yabapmatt

I would be fine with you translating the articles to Hebrew, is there a large Israeli community here?

Also if you like my articles I would encourage you to upvote them. I noticed you upvoted your comment 100% but you haven't upvoted the post at all...

Our community is less than 200 people, but we are a quality one.
I'm sorry I didn't have VP, upvoted.
Also, thanks!

I'd love to spend more time doing #3. There are a lot of users that show up and are clueless about how STEEM/SBD/steemit.com works. Especially since FB & Twitter are the norm for SM. Not to mention the language barriers for some.

Part of #5 is identifying they type of abuser. Are they human? Or a bot? If human, are they: lazy, making noob mistakes, or are they posting abuse with intent?

If they are lazy or need help then I really wish I had the time to help them. One of the many things I need to find time to do is put together a list of communities here with Discord channels that I can point them to. Especially the non-English speakers.

Or find someone who as done it all ready. My curation is almost nil at this point.

Well I think you already do more than enough! I guess I should have made it clear that it's crazy to expect every witness to do all of these things, but rather the witnesses should cover all of them collectively.

For #5 I was really talking about abuse with intent which there is unfortunately enough of to keep us all very busy.

The language barrier is definitely a big problem. I'm hoping that once the hivemind feature is released it will lead to the creation of communities for different languages which will really help new users find the information and get the help they need in their native languages.

Very busy in deed. I need to come up for air every once in a while. I finally got around to approving your witness. I had meant to do it a couple of weeks ago after hearing your views on the topic of bid /vote bots.

I think as witnesses, outside of producing blocks, we'll all have our own niches. I agree with you that the important part is being a contributing member in some way that improves or enhances what everyone here is trying to build.

PS.. Now I'm off to use your Steem Bot Tracker. 😘

I also just approved your witness. I've just learned more about the work you're doing and you're definitely deserving of my vote! Please keep up the good work and let me know how i can help!

One thing I would like to see from witnesses is some kind of star rating / best practice / mark of approval for the safety of alternative platforms and applications. I did read one post last year that suggested the process used to access one platform sent the keys to a server, and that this was both unnecessary and a risk (if not necessarily malicious).

I know that there is steemconnect, which a lot of the platforms use, but this does not always seem to be the case.

This concept falls into the general category of "doing the technical checks to protect non technical users" and, whilst this isn't the witnesses job in itself, it requires (a) trustworthiness and (b) strong technical skills. These are basically the two main characteristics that I look for in a witness (along with your no. 4 - Providing tools and services that improve the platform).

Potentially the concept could be expanded to outside exchanges and other crypto related affairs, but the main concern is keeping our own house in order. One of the worst possible outcomes for any blockchain is some kind of hack or scam or weakness that results in significant financial loss.

Yea definitely and I think that kind of falls under my #5 point of preventing / curbing abuse and scams - even though this not have had malicious intent it could potentially be used maliciously in the future so it needs to be stopped to help prevent bad things from happening.

Preventing / curbing abuse, destructive behavior, and scams;

Thing is, i have the impression even that word: "Abuse" is not defined exactly the same way by all witnesses (Let alone regular users).

It would be AWESOME if witnesses create some sort of document where they stablish some minimum concensus about what, exactly, is consider abuse and other important topics. It wold be really helpful for the rest of users.

I'm wondering if a consensus is even possible. It's one of the reasons for @steemcleaners & @spaminator being two different projects though I am heavily involved in both. @steemcleaners tries to stick to the black & white types of abuse such as identity/content theft & plagiarism. I handle more subjective spam issues with @spaminator.

The main reason for that is if @spaminator strays into an area that a majority of the community doesn't support it won't reflect badly on @steemcleaners as much. It's also the reason you no longer see @steemcleaners commenting often about referral link spam. I think there needs to be a separate group for that as well.

My concern is that "grey area". It is a big deal righ now, specially with the whales that vote only a couple of authors, the use of bidbots and the "THIS IS TOO MUCH REWARDS!!" kinda war we just had.

All grey areas.

I don't know how good is this for investors and new users...

I know. If I personally had my own SP to do with as I wanted I'd be flagging some of it. The problem I find with the flag wars like the one we just had is that when it is done publicly it goes over board. Quietly flagging down rewards that someone thinks are over valued is a better way to go. Especially if there does not seem to be any proven abuse on the part of the person receiving the votes & flags.

On the other hand it doesn't draw attention to the problem.

Yes, we need more communication about how the site works. I've enjoyed messing with steem bot tracker. Peace & Ty

Thanks for that info. Are there guidelines about how to become a witness?

I don’t quite get how that is done.

Sure, there are a bunch of great posts on the topic but here's one to get you started:

Seriously, what is a STEEM witness? Why should I care? How do I become one? (Answer)

'Contribution content'. I like that. Apart from the value to the readers, how are you contributing towards growing steemit?

I mentioned a number of ways in the post, for example directly bringing new investors onto the platform, and also through the tools and services I have created which have helped many people learn about the platform and be more successful on it.

You have really put alot into this platform and i strongly believe in you willingness and ability to do more.
Thanks for the investors and i also that the more people understand how steemit works the better the platform and also easier for you.@yabapmatt

Hey @yabapmatt, you wrote

“That being said, I do know there are still many things I have left to learn and I literally keep a list of things that I don’t know or don’t understand about Steem and go through it periodically and spend the time to learn them.”

I’m curious to know, do you mind sharing some of the things on your list?

And from a witness’ perspective, what would be some of the most critical things you think all — new and old — users should know?

Well first off I think there's a big difference between things users should know and things that witnesses should know. For users, I made a post a while back with a list of things I think are important to learn if you're really serious about Steem: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/how-to-steem-part-1-learn-learn-learn

My list at this point is focused on many technical details that I think are important for top witnesses to know, but definitely not necessary for non-witnesses. One newer item on the list, for example, is understanding in detail how the bandwidth limiting works on the platform.

I understand it at a high level but don't know exactly how the "current_reserve_ratio" is set and how it changes and what things can be done both short term and long term to help the situation.

Thanks for the link to that post @yabapmatt, I found it pretty helpful.

This is all most likely stuff you already know, but I found another recent post going over the technicals behind the badwidth limits: https://steemit.com/bandwidth/@timcliff/steem-bandwidth-user-experience-issue.

Thank you for the thoughtful response! Keep up the good work!

Do you think that there will be a time when steemit(dtube) will pay to video creator according to video views by anyone instead of steemit users' upvotes? What do you say?

I don't think so, views are too easily gamed and manipulated. It would just be a contest of who gets the most fake views to their content. The way Steem currently values content based on users' upvotes is good, but the problem is with the very lopsided distribution of Steem Power where very few users have the vast majority. This means you basically need a "whale" to upvote your post to gain any real rewards.

In the future I hope that this balance improves which would lead to many smaller votes adding up to as much or more than one whale vote does now.

Gday Steemians.
I have never been more in love with a community and a future as i am with Steem.
I will be shouting its virtues in a few posts designed to share my journey into crypto and get my friends involved.
Its only been one week in Steem and i am so excited for 2018

its amazing post and good information.

I am new and don't understand what a witness is at all, can someone help me?

wonderful post..thanks for sharing following
up voted

That's good to know about this thing had no idea about that will try
by the way i will always support you.

Vote for witness done!

You got a 27.25% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @yabapmatt! Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!

Hi @yabapmatt, thank you a million times for your work on Steem Bot Tracker!

I just wanted to let you know that, for at least a couple of hours now, a number of important bots such as @postpromoter, @sneaky-ninja and @jerrybanfield are not shown on SBT. I don't know if this is a bug or there is an other reason for their disappearance.

Cheers!

P.S. I guess that it's a bug, since the STEEM/SBD prices aren't loading properly also (I hope :D)

"Current Prices: 1 STEEM = $1.00 | 1 SBD = $1.00"

Some bots that are classified as they automatically refund invalid bids, actually they don't refund. Some don't even upvote. Some are fraud. Maybe you should remove them from the list. Plus add minnowbooster, randowhale and smartmarktet in calculator. @yabapmatt

Hi @pratique007, there was an issue with some of the bots recently which may have caused them not to refund or miss votes. Please let me know if you are still having any issues.

Thank you for responding. Also, I forgot to appreciate your work. You are doing very great job by providing this service to us. I didn't receive upvote or refund from @adriatik 8 hours ago and from @aksdwi 2 days ago. I had put bid of 1.0 sbd and 0.2 sbd respectively which is so much money in my country. Let me know if those were the bots which were having issues. And also add minnowsupport, randowhale and smartmarket in calculator. Thanks again. :) @yabapmatt

Screenshot_3.png
I very love the work you doing with the bots.

That sums it up very well and you do a great job so far!

Is this the secret to better earnings on Steemit?

I struggle to get $1 per post and I'm really trying. I was hoping I could supplement my disability with Steemit so I hope I can earn even half as much as others do on here so I can pay my bills.